The Escape (John Puller, #3)(149)

Puller turned back to Knox. “We’ll get your mother to come up and stay with you while you recover.”

“You don’t want to stay with me?” she mumbled.

“I meant all of us. I’d like to meet her.”

“I think . . . I think you’d like her.”

“If she’s anything like you, I’m sure I will.”

“We got her, Puller. This time we got her.”

“Yes, we got her. We got them both.”

“Hurts like hell, John.”

He gripped her hand more tightly. “You’re going to be fine, Veronica.”

“You’re a good man, John Puller. A damn good man.”

Knox slowly closed her eyes.





CHAPTER





74



PULLER OPENED THE door, closed it behind him, and sat down at the small table across from her. He dropped the file folder he was carrying on the table.

Susan Reynolds was in an orange prison jumpsuit and her hands and feet were in shackles. Her left arm and shoulder were encased in a cast. She stared impassively across the width of the wood at him.

“How are the accommodations, Susan?” he asked.

“Lovely. Haven’t been this comfortable in years.”

He glanced at the cast. “The docs have instructions to go easy on the painkillers. They don’t want you to get addicted.”

“I was sure I had you to thank for that.”

“Sorry about Anton. He unfortunately lost his head back at the safe house.”

Reynolds simply stared at him.

He opened the folder. “Since I can barely stand to breathe the same air as you, let’s get down to it.” He slid a document across to her.

She didn’t even look at it. “What is it?” she asked in an indifferent tone.

“A confession. A detailed confession not only to what you’ve done recently but to what you did to frame my brother. All you have to do is sign it.”

“And all you have to do is slide it in a shredder after you leave, because I’m signing nothing.”

He leaned back in his chair. “You sign the confession the death penalty goes off the table.”

“Lethal injection? Bring it on. You murdered Anton. What do I care about living one second longer?”

“I didn’t murder him. I shot him before he murdered others.”

“Your version of the truth. I’ll stick with mine. So your leverage is less than zero, Puller. Kill me. Get it over with. And your brother can go back to rotting in jail. Even with all that’s happened now, there is no evidence to overturn his conviction. I’ll think about that when they put the needle in my arm. And I’m sure it will bring a smile to my lips as I say goodbye to this miserable world.”

“Even though you set him up, framed him? He’s innocent. You know that.”

She looked bored now. “How many surveillance devices in here, I wonder? Three? Ten?” She said in a raised voice, “For the record, Robert Puller is guilty as sin. He stole classified information. He met with a known Iranian spy. He was working with me to bring down the U.S. government. He is scum. I will testify to this in exchange for a deal that will allow me to live peacefully and quietly in a minimum-security prison with the possibility of parole in five years.”

She turned back to Puller and smiled tauntingly. “One always has to have a backup plan.” She paused, studying him. “You ever wonder where that text came from telling you not to trust Knox?”

Now Puller remained silent, waiting.

“I sent it.”

“Why, if you believed she was working with you?”

“Because I didn’t really believe it. I don’t trust anyone. No one. Except Anton. And I’m very much into divide and conquer. If you two killed each other off, so much the better.”

“What was it like to plan your husband’s murder?”

She said derisively, “I was in Russia thousands of miles away.”

“Yeah, Russia, your adopted country. But I wonder where your boyfriend Anton was?”

“Well, we’ll never know, since you murdered him.”

“Your son knew you did it. He told me so. He called me after your arrest. Thanked me for bringing him closure.”

“Poor Danny was always a little slow on the uptake. And he spent too much time in fantasyland. And he was way too much of a daddy’s boy. He has no balls of his own.”

“He’s an FBI attorney with a very impressive conviction record.”

“Do you think I really care?”

“My point is you didn’t fool him.”

“And my answer would be exactly the same. I don’t give a crap.”

“Did you orchestrate my kidnapping in Kansas?”

She nodded. “Whether you told us what you knew or said you would stand down, we would have killed you. We were just toying with you. It’s the style that counts. Anton and I have a lot of that. Other people would have just shot you.”

“Well, your ‘style’ gave my brother the opportunity to save my life.”

She shifted in her seat and used her chin to rub at a spot near her injured shoulder. “I would like to know how you pulled it off,” she said. “How did you figure we were going to hit the safe house?”